


Under Pressure

by 0rang3_karr0ts



Series: Pressure [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Original Character(s), Mutant Powers, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Season/Series 03, Protective Frank Castle, Protective Matt Murdock, References to Depression, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:46:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0rang3_karr0ts/pseuds/0rang3_karr0ts
Summary: In the aftermath of season 2Frank Castle has finally found an even flow in life, now that all of his loose ends are tied up in one form or another. Leave it to some kid, bordering on psycho, to ripple his even waters. There are plenty of things that he can handle on his own, this kid is not one of them.Naya J. James, the unfortunate byproduct of a medical company's sudden success, has spent her entire childhood isolated, and the majority of her teen years underneath white hospital lights. It didn't take her long to realize that nobody was going to extend their hand to her, and in an attempt to grab fate by the reigns, she strikes back.Like the coming of a storm, Naya drags Frank into her conquest freedom. A last-ditch effort to burn all her bridges, a conquest to bring a rising pharmaceutical company to its knees.(FYI Naya is a minor, this IS NOT a romantic story, and nothing that isn't strictly platonic (outside of canon) will ever take place.)Reuploaded with updates. Previous title: "Kid Genius"
Series: Pressure [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2202906
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Under Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome, welcome, to the hellscape that is my brain space! Yeah. That's how I'm introducing this story. This is something I've been working on in my free time, tell me what y'all think!
> 
> If anyone thinks they can portray Frank Castle better than me, I am looking for a co-author or you know, some help :')
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter one of Under Pressure! Tell me what you think and thank you for coming along for the ride!!
> 
> \- O.K
> 
> (TW: Mentions of Drugs and Canon Typical Violence)

The man-made nook was in no way inviting.

There were four total warehouses proximate to each other, not 50 feet apart, but that was the extent of the scenery, aside from the rampant amounts of grass and shrubbery. The space was quiet, old, no doubt abandoned for at least a year, and except for the occasional creaking of the walls and doors, everything remained still. The buildings were littered with graffiti and covered in dirt from the wear and tear of the weather over time. The land was bland, a place that normal people wouldn't think twice about, with a single paved road that led downhill towards a truck stop. It didn't take a genius to see that it was the only avenue for entry.

The buildings sat, bare and empty, in a flawless display of solitude. They looked like they had been away from the influences of men for a long time, stray trash from stores in the distance the only tell that people were nearby. They were surrounded on three sides by hills, the rises of land only present because of the area's geography, a strange but massive dip in the land caused by only God knows what.

It was this unique lifelessness that made the sudden introduction of steps, the distinct sound of skin slapping against the stone that echoed throughout the area, so much more striking. They beat against the floor with urgency, no stagger between them despite the rough texture.

The air seemed to bubble as the frame of a girl, draped in clothing that was much too large, darted up the road as though her life depended on it, the soft sound of her shaky breath absent of the anxiety one would feel while being chased. The wind picked up, rustling the grass and doors to orchestrate her charge, and the sun, which had been hiding behind stray clouds, was now glaring down on everything, like a spotlight made just for her. She moved without stopping, her presence swallowing the hollow feeling in the air as if she were aware that this was her stage, her show.

Behind those steps, not far down the road, were the uneven thumping of heavy boots, soles which no doubt belonged to a small squad of men, hollering behind her in frustration. The sound of weapons rubbing against the fabric of their gear served only to alarm her of the footing they had gained in the last fifteen minutes.

She wished it was luck that had carried her this far so that she could blame her shortcoming on the universe instead of her lack of competence, but she knew better. The fading hum of her body knew better. She was different. Cursed, in more ways than one.

She was aware that there were probably cars nearby, men on the peaks of the hills, all there to keep her from getting any further. They knew what they were doing when they ran her from out of those streets, so far off-road that nobody would see her when her body gave in on itself. It would take a miracle for her to escape her current situation, miracles which she had always been short on, and she was aware of what that meant for her in the long run. Trouble is, so far down the line, she couldn't bring herself to care.

There was nowhere she could escape to once she was cornered in here, and nothing else she could do in terms of fighting back, but it felt good, and right now that was all that mattered. 

Despite the odds, which she wouldn't hesitate to admit were heavily against her, she felt ecstatic. The thrill of the chase, the escape, the fresh air. Even without the involuntary high, she felt like she could beat anything, more so than she had ever felt in all of her years of living. She couldn't get enough of it, and underneath her breath, she thanked whatever it was that watched over her for it, knowing full well she was a single step away from dropping to the floor into nightmarish unconsciousness.

The raging look of joy in her eyes was unnerving enough to send chills down the spine of anyone who still felt fear and discomfort into anyone who was still sane. There was a tightness in her throat, a laugh she was less than a moment away from choking on, and something else, bubbling towards the surface like magma.

Somehow, all of her thoughts and feelings had gotten off of their leashes, out of their compartments, and they were bumping hard against the shell of her head in a fruitless attempt to get out. It was, to say the least, a monster of a headache. That's how she would describe it, had she not been so busy with other things, those other things being the overconfident and heavily glorified thugs hot on her tail, the tranqs, (yeah, they were hunting her like some sort of beast) which no longer served to do anything but buzz her, and her sudden lack of sustaining energy. She could feel herself crumbling inward, the foundations of her psyche weakened by the drug coursing through her veins.

She knew that this dive into the warehouse was a foolish effort on her part. She was prepared to dash around empty shelves and through short corridors, was prepared to run herself into a corner somewhere at the back of the warehouse. She was mentally preparing for everything to end here, in a blaze of glory, as she was gunned down by darts and pumped full of enough stuff to knock her down for days, but her premature preparation couldn't even begin to fathom everything that would begin from that point forward.

The door was already open for her, the lock snapped clean off, dangling to the side. That should have rung every alarm in her skull, alerting her to the possibility of danger, or endangering someone else, but she didn't let the thought linger. She could feel her body destabilizing, like she was floating, or worse yet a ghost watching her own body, and was certain that a door was the least of her worries, opting to ignore it entirely in favor of not losing speed.

She slammed right through it, listening to it swing shut again with a vengeance as she nearly tumbled to a halt. Staggering back into a sprint, she sloppily yanked the last dart out of her forearm with a giggle.

_ “A giggle of all things  _ .” There was an itch in her body that wanted to choke the poor girl out before she gave in to her own insanity, and that itch was growing in strength the longer it simmered unchecked.  _ “I’m losing it.” _

She wanted to scream, release all of the pent-up energy in her bones, but all she could muster was a smile, the same kind of sickening smile that you often find gracing the lips of the villain, right before their final stand, full of pride and confidence that couldn't be shaken. Behind her, a heavy foot kicked open the door, and the four uniformed men marched their way inside of the building, guns aimed at the back of her retreating figure. The clock was ticking, each new dart that fired past her signaling the loss of another second.

A sting bloomed on her right shoulder as another dart made contact, but she left it there, trusting that it wouldn't push her back any more than the others had. 

Those anesthetic darts were the only tools they could use to neutralize her. The existence of the abilities they had forced out of her body was what destroyed that upper hand. With no cards of her own to play, it was only natural that she played their cards against them. She could only imagine their frustration, after being bested time and time again by such a defect.

She was by no means immune to the drugs — though over time she had built up a resistance to the numbing effects of it — with the amount of practice she had glitching out to avoid darts, the damage was minimal and their attempts were laughable. Without that power, she would have been dead a mile or so back. That was half the battle.

The other half was getting away, and much to her distress, she was losing on those grounds. She could hide, better than most folks despite not knowing the land, but she had lost the ability to outrun her enemies not long ago.

There was a corner to her left that would take her to a room where she might have been able to hide for a little, but she couldn’t bring herself to steady her pace. Agile as she was, she couldn’t fight against the momentum she had built up running through that hall. Unable to grip the floor with her bare feet, her body slammed into a crappy makeshift wall, the full weight of which should have barreled her straight through the shoddy plastic.

It didn't though.

A shiver ran through her nerves and for a fraction of a second she couldn't feel the floor beneath her feet. Normally a thought like that would make somebody fear for their lives, but it was different with her. She knew she was getting better. She grappled onto that feeling and forcefully amplified it.

All at once, without warning, a feeling akin to blood rushing through a limb as it wakes rang throughout her entire body like hell. She yelled, less out of pain and more so out of shock as her glitch activated, rumbling every function in her body all at once. Her lungs burned and her eyes watered as if she was holding her breath and in a blue flash of light, one akin to the displacement of large pixels, she vanished. 

She never made contact with the wall. One second she was sliding shoulder first into it, which would've hurt like a bitch since the wall wasn't exactly thin, and the next, she was rolling across the cold floor like a rag doll. She felt the dagger in her back dig further into her shoulder as she hit the floor, but that feeling was nothing compared to the aftershock of the glitch.

Everything in her vibrated so fast that it couldn't be seen from the outside. She felt numb and on fire at the same time, like she was hanging by her throat and under a mile of dirt. Everything weighed several tons, but she couldn't feel anything beneath or around her.

Small rises in the uneven concrete left the exposed flesh on her body littered with scrapes and scratches, and with an unceremonious thud, she was flung against the wall on the opposite side of the room, collapsing into a quivering mess of glitched particles. Wheezing, her head slung backward, robbing her of the rest of her energy the instant that it made ruthless contact with the rough surface. Though she couldn't feel it, she took the violent ringing that started the moment her shivering stopped as a subtle nod to the pain she'd be in once the adrenaline high wore off. Among other things.

Her hands searched frantically for something to anchor herself on, though she could hardly force her fingers even an inch off of the floor. Everything was still buzzing in her head, the feeling of numbness encompassing her from her core outward. Her chest heaved up and down, the weight of which alone would have brought her to her knees had she not been on the floor already.

The impact had done a number on her, and even if it was only a small number, all things accounted for, it was a dangerous one. She knew she needed to get up, knew she couldn't stay here, not if it meant she was going to get away, but no matter how much she wanted it, she couldn't. She needed a minute. A minute she didn't have.

Hell, she didn't remember running being this hard. Sure, if the distance was accounted for it made a little bit of sense, but not like this. Under normal circumstances, running and ducking undercover would've been easy. She had been in tiptop shape until she'd been pumped full of that stabilizer bull not even an hour ago. That had left her thoroughly drained.

_ "You had a good run, doll. Better luck next time."  _ She chided in her head. It was nothing but an echo, background static to accompany the ringing. A breathy chuckle eventually followed.

Piece by piece, her mind began to give way to the notion that she might spend the rest of her life underneath those bright white lights.

That, or dead. Whichever came first. And given the circumstances, "dead," wasn't looking like it was too far on the horizon.

She could once again hear the familiar heavy footsteps of the armed whoever they had sent to drag her back this time. She couldn't help but feel that this might be the final thread, her  _ last _ , last-ditch effort at whatever her skewed vision of freedom was at this point. As her breath finally steadied, she closed her eyes and allowed for everything to go dark.

She laid there, near lifeless on the floor, shattered fragments of an epiphany joining the white noise in her head. The things she would do if given the chance, and now it seemed like that chance would never come. It was a shame that her battle would end here.

She feasted on the irony of her situation. The fact that what they did to her body was now the reason they were having such a hard time recovering her, and also the reason she couldn’t feel any of her sore limbs. That in their pursuit of knowledge, they had created a nuisance they couldn't control, and that in her pursuit of freedom, she had become reckless. 

The next few moments weren’t nearly as clear as she would’ve hoped. The adrenaline was running on its last leg and the tranq drugs were lulling her to sleep. The energy that it had taken to run to that particular warehouse was all but spent. There really was no way out of this all. There shouldn’t have been.

And then, all in one second, one of the men in the familiar navy blue uniform she'd come to loathe came crumbling through the wall she had glitched past, tearing and cracking through the plastic ridges. The lack of grace was a dead giveaway as to why he hadn't taken the door like the rest of her oncoming foe. He had been beaten and thrown by a shadow twice his size, which loomed on the other side of the hole without so much of a peep. She couldn't see his face, but her heart skipped a beat as hope flickered across her own.

While he basked in the dark, his figure was nothing short of terrifying, a line-for-line image of how she had imagined the incarnation of death.

Their eyes met, her electric blue irises lingering blankly on his deep brown ones as he made his way to her, stepping through the hole. He looked at the man who he had beaten to a pulp, then directed his curious gaze onto the body of the girl on the floor, brows furrowed as he tried to decipher the scene. The floor beneath her unsteady palms felt like it was vibrating in anticipation of the fight to come.

Slowly, she pushed herself up onto her elbows, crawling towards a corner on the same wall where the only door in the room stood, the man following after her with steady steps, knowing full well she couldn't retreat anywhere. He stopped for a second as her body threw another quick glitch fit, which he interpreted as a shiver, not bothering to hide his surprise. She let out a muffled groan, but continued to scoot, pulling herself upright and falling slack against the wall, her eyes never leaving the looming phantom, the smile on her face lucid.

As she reached the corner, and he reached the center of the room, the door adjacent to them slammed open, revealing the armed men. Everything was right where she needed it to be, the stranger in their line of sight, her figure safely out of it. 

She was more than aware of the fact that she didn't stand a chance against the armed idiots, who stood frozen, baffled by the sight of their motionless comrade on the floor. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, and the sweat dripping down every inch of her body, both telltale signs that she was at the end of her rope, signs she was incapable of resisting. But if it was him... If she could make the stranger basked in shadows and the mercenaries the object of the other's aggression, then there was hope.

Lazily, she gave the man, whose cold eyes had yet to leave her, a thumbs up, her head nodding weakly to the side as if to say  _ “I’m counting on you.” _

It was a delicate plan, one that could easily go south provided that the man decided he didn't want to intrude anymore, or if they shot him dead before he could. But it was a smart one, a quickly woven web, and the black-clad stranger was her spider.

He looked confused, or curious, she couldn't differentiate, though she studies as his eyes moved from the girl to the men who had yet to figure out what to do. A roguish grunt bellowed from his throat, in… acknowledgment? Skepticism? Again, she couldn't tell.

She could feel a weight lift from her chest as the three remaining men in navy blue combat uniforms charged him out of fury and confusion, and he willingly charged them back, a deafening roar escaping from the depths of his throat.

Through her haze, she saw the first man charge forward with a battle cry of his own. He was unrefined, recklessly approaching with a knife, and as soon as he was in the stranger’s range, he had been hoisted up into the air and slammed hard against the floor with more than enough force to knock the wind out of his lungs. Not wasting another second, the stranger pulled out an ordinary-looking pistol and fired two clean shots into his chest, before turning around and firing another two at the other men who had yet to draw the appropriate firearm.

The second assailant fell limp like a puppet after taking a clean shot between the eyes, while the third had managed to wriggle to the side, avoiding the bullet by a hairsbreadth. He was shivering, suffocating on the stranger’s imposing aura as he tried and failed to pull his gun from its holster.

Unfortunately for the fool, it never left his hip. He had spent too much time fumbling for it as the stranger stepped closer at an agonizingly slow pace and finally his cry of fury and frustration was cut short. The sound of a final gunshot rang throughout the room, bouncing off of the walls like church bells as the man fell onto the floor next to his partner.

Then silence. The entire warehouse was silent once again. She could faintly make out the sound of the wind whistling outside softly, but nothing else. The heavy scent of iron flooded into her nose, as if she needed any more proof that the men in front of her were dead. She wanted to clap, impressed and slightly mortified by the scene she had witnessed, but her mind was finally slipping into a dormant state. The man by her side flinched a little, clearly not as dead as she thought beforehand, but the stranger didn't give him even a second to rise as he fired off his last rounds into the bastard's chest, soaking the navy blue in blood, shifting it into a strikingly darker color. 

_ Now  _ she laughed. It started as a small chuckle, a release of the tension in her chest, but as she watched the blood pool underneath the bodies, the warm liquid of the man closest to her flowing underneath her thigh, she was roaring in amusement like a maniac. It scratched at her throat like sandpaper, the volume alarmingly high despite her dizziness.

She sucked in a deep breath, raising her head once more to get a good look at the man who had made clean work of the men who she had been left at the mercy of. She wanted to speak, maybe words of gratitude, more likely a snarky remark, but that laugh had taken everything out of her. With one final breath, her body collapsed deeper into the corner, her consciousness finally gone after all of that trouble.

__________

"Aw shit," He muttered, slowly drawing his finger away from the trigger.

As smoothly as he had pulled it out, Frank slid the gun back in its holster, sighing as he made his way over to the girl in the corner. The way she had slumped over with little to no warning made his heart skip, if not out of worry than out of pity. She already looked half dead the moment he had laid eyes on her, it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch to think that she had died right there, though that didn't make the thought any less concerning.

Kneeling by her side, he placed two digits on the pulse of her neck, steadying his own breath in concentration. Good. He could feel the gentle throbbing of her heart against his fingertips, beating at a steady pace. Not only was she alive, but she was stable. Despite the mess that she looked like on the outside, littered with scrapes and bruises from head to toe, he didn’t need to worry about her kicking it before he could get her to a hospital for a more thorough check-up. 

Ousting an empty dart that had lodged itself deep in her shoulder, he gave it a quick once over, checking to see if there was anything left in it. The vial at the end was empty, save for a couple of drops of what he assumed was an anesthetic of some sort. The dosage was much too small to keep her down for long, so Frank drew her gently by the shoulder onto his raised knee, tapping lightly at her cheek to see if he could spur her awake. He felt her breathing shift beneath him, a sign that she was waking, and took it as his cue to try again.

At the third pat, her eyes fluttered open, panic rising to the surface as she stared right through him to the ceiling above. Her breathing was still slow and Frank could feel her falling back under the influence of the drug. That would do the two of them no good in the long run. Unlike the kid, Frank had no idea what he had let himself get dragged into. She had the answers he needed, and she couldn’t give them to him if she was unconscious.

“Hey,” He called, his voice low and rough. “Hey, don’t go to sleep on me just yet.” He murmured, watching her eyes slowly fall shut. 

Frank patted her cheek again with a bit more urgency, then gently shaking her shoulder in hopes that it would be more effective. Her eyes opened again, this time more focused than the last, the panic absent as clarity attempted to ease its way into her mind. 

“Yeah,” He breathed. “Yeah, that’s good, kid. Look at me.”

He watched her struggle to regain control of her body, as the curtain over her mind began to lift. It was an excruciatingly slow process. More than once, her head fell involuntarily to the side as if it weighed a ton, and each time he had to help her stay upright, placing his hand at the base of her cheekbone to remind her that he needed her to be present. Eventually, he had coaxed her into clarity, even if it took much longer than he had anticipated. After a minute of simply watching the rise and fall of her chest as she steadied herself, she could manage a nod to answer simple questions.

He started with the basics. Are you hurt?  _ Yes.  _ Do you need help?  _ Yes.  _ Can you stand?  _ Yes. _

The last question compelled her to act, gripping at the wrists on her shoulder in a weak attempt to pull herself away from him. To her relief, Frank took the hint. She avoided his eyes, despite his earlier request while he gently set her back against the wall, giving her space to absorb her surroundings.

With the combination of the still air and her steady breathing, the silence had become comfortable enough for Frank to ask his next question. “Can you talk?”

She opened her mouth to speak but stopped, pursing her lips shut with a soft groan as her head bumped softly against the wall. She had forgotten about the tender spot on her head, the stinging a not so gentle reminder that it wasn't time to pull all stops. Clearly, that answer was a  _ "No, not yet."  _

Newly aware of her head injury, Frank backtracked again, taking her less than ideal condition into concern. She needed a minute to recollect herself before he continued the semi-interrogation they both knew was necessary, and he was willing to give her that. He rose to his feet, making a B-line to the hole he had made in the wall to check out the perimeter, maybe even grab a couple of things from his truck before he got into the nitty-gritty details of the girl's abnormal situation. If that wasn't enough time for her to gather her bearings then he didn't know what would be.

He looked at her expectantly, double-checking that she would be fine in there by herself while he busied himself with checking out the surrounding area. It was the familiar desperate look in her eyes that glued him to his spot, and the subtle tapping of her fingers on the floor that renewed his attention back on the elephant in the room. He knew nothing about the mercs he'd just taken care of or the young girl who oozed of desperation. The pleading look in her eye was a small taste of what she could share, and it told him that she would rather he not leave.

His brow furrowed as she tapped the floor at a sloth's pace, the sporadic movement of her finger catching Frank off guard.

Slowly, it slid across the floor in a line about an inch long. Then she tapped three times against the floor, splashing at the blood that was underneath her thigh in the process. A small pause and she tapped the floor again. Then another slide. Then two more taps. 

The realization caught Frank off guard. It was sloppy, her dazed state making the movements hard to decipher, but it was more than enough to get him walking in her direction once more. He kneeled by her side again, watching her hands with a calculating gaze as she tapped out the rest of the word in morse code.

Tap. Tap. Slide. A small pause, and then a single tap. Then she started over, spelling the word out again, eyeing the corpse nearest to her with such a firm frown that Frank thought she was trying to raise the dead.

_ B L U E.  _

Blue? He didn’t know what that meant, but given the girl’s insistence, he gave it his best shot. He tracked the position of her eyes over to the corpse whose blood had soaked the underside of her baggy jeans. “I see him… What’s he got to do with any of this?”

She directed her firm gaze on Frank, then on the body, a dry chuckle escaping her lips as she realized that the whole uniform was blue. She started tapping again but stopped mid-letter with a heavy sigh. Could she speak? Experimentally, she parted her lips, testing to see if her throat and lungs would let her hold a normal conversation. Frank took the subtle movement of her mouth as his cue to listen close, though he was doubtful she could manage much.

Her voice hardly carried more than a couple of feet, the full volume behind her words trapped beneath the sore feeling in her chest. He had to lean in to make sure that he hadn’t misheard her when she spoke.

“The pouch. The… his hip pouch,” She murmured, “I need it.”

Hip pouch… Looking over at the lifeless body, he could see that the pouch was the only thing on its person that wasn’t blue. The girl nodded groggily in approval the moment Frank stood, inching his way towards the corpse. He had more than enough confirmation that the two were on the same page, but that didn’t stop him from being cautious. 

Tracing a calloused thumb down the stitching of the pouch, he took note of the visible layer of padding on the outside. The little indents in the sewing separated the fabric into three identical pockets, plus a fourth longer one, each occupied by a cylinder-shaped object. He clutched the contents of the pouch in his hand, rolling them up and down his palm with a raised brow. Three vials of a clear liquid marked with blue tape and a syringe casing, around the same size as an epi-pen, albeit an empty one. What did she need these for? Better yet what was in them?

Turning around, Frank flashed the vials at her, waiting for some kind of reaction. He took the glint of recognition in her eyes as a good sign, wrapping his fingers around them securely before trudging back to take a knee by her side. He muttered something underneath his breath, holding both the syringe and vials at a distance where she could see them but not reach them, in hopes that this would be incentive enough to get some questions answered.

“I can give you this,” he started. “But you're gonna have to help me understand what's going on.”

At first instead of complying she tried to walk away, pushing against the floor with her palms to get out of the corner. She knew that the other men had identical pouches with identical syringes, and didn't feel like negotiating information with her body as numb as it was, but Frank wasn't having it. Watching her struggle to her feet like a baby deer wasn't going to cut it, and for her own good, he placed his palm on her shoulder, the uninjured one, pushing down against her weight to keep her with just enough force to keep her sitting. It wasn't difficult, her strength couldn't even measure in comparison to his, but that didn't make it any less frustrating for either of them. The glare in her eyes, full of unadulterated spite and malice took him by surprise, but he didn't hesitate to return it full force.

She froze under its intensity and eventually gave up on the idea of resisting for no reason.

"Good, good." Frank hummed, moving his hand away once he was sure that she was done with her little fit. "You got a name?"

She let the silence simmer, the atmosphere growing tenser the longer she stubbornly held onto it. The way Frank watched her like a hawk, looking for any indication that she was going to answer didn't help to make the conversation more inviting, to no one's surprise. Just as the long silence became suffocating, he opened his mouth to ask again, only to be smoothly interrupted by her answer, as reluctant as it was. "Naya."

"Naya? Naya what?"

Again she lets the silence simmer, this time with no intention of letting up again. Frank could feel the dread oozing off of her and decided that that question didn't need answering just yet.

"Alright then, Naya. Call me Pete. How old are you?" After another few moments of silence on her part, Frank had no choice but to let that one slide as well. She gave him a look that screamed for him to start asking more relevant questions, and for time's sake, he obliged.

"Did you know who those men were?"

She glanced around at the corpses with a small hum, digesting the full extent of their injuries with cold eyes. "I… knew who they worked for."

"And the work they were doing?"

"... Uh… tag, but with  _ anesthesia  _ ?" Frank was unamused, but Naya chortled, surprised by her own answer. That chortle turned into a violent mix of dry heaving and coughing, the humor she scraped from her catastrophe of a chase dissipating with every throat-wrenching sound.

He waited for her to mellow and then asked his next question. "What do they need you for?"

"Wrong place, wrong time." She looked at Frank with that familiar venomous scowl, though he knew it wasn't directed at him this time. Her eyes were distant, sly, amused. They spoke of volumes of contempt that she refused to vocalize.

"... and that's why you have armed mercenaries hot on your ass?"

"Yup."

Somewhere along the line, their conversation had turned into a staring contest. A competition of who would speak first, and who would look away first, and who’s eyes would reveal more. It was more than tense, a thick cloud of defiance threatening to choke the pair out. Frank waited for the pressure to reach her, Naya waited for Frank to move on.

Naya lost their little glare game first, the energy making her antsy. Frank recognized the signs of her trying to leave, and yet again held her shoulder down, using his gaze one final time to encourage her to stay seated.

“Stop that. I can't have you stumbling around just yet."

She groaned in protest and tried again, falling back on her ass when he didn't let up. Frank ignored it.

He opened his mouth to ask Naya something else, in hopes that it would shine even the smallest amount more light on the dead men. Before Frank can get another word out she interrupts, unknowingly answering the question on the tip of his tongue.

"More of them,” She groaned, finally rising onto one wobbly knee after a fair amount of struggling. “Camped up on the hills... more down at that truck stop. More effective shit. I won't go back. I won't," She whined, burning holes into his skull with her powerful stare. "Pete… the syringe."

He was taken aback by the determination in her eyes. It perfectly contrasted her weak physicality in a way that made her seem invincible. It was gone before he could dissect it. Powerful was the only word that he seemed fitting for the air she gave off that flicker of a second. He grunted in understanding, turning towards the hole for the final time. "Sit tight."

"Wait, where are you going?"

"Don't worry about it." He called back.

Before she could protest further, he was gone.

Frank eased his way outside through a side door that faced the next warehouse, helpfully marked with a big fat 2 on the side of it. Long shadows masked the alleyways between buildings. It was more than helpful when it came to quick and efficient cover from anyone at a distance. 

His truck sat somewhere around the back. It wasn’t nearly as hidden as he was now, but if he was quiet, and didn’t kick up an unnecessary fuss before it became necessary, then he could sneak into his trunk for some extra help without getting caught, which is exactly what he did. 

He strutted over to the trunk, pulled his keys out without a peep, unlocked the door, grabbed the Winchester magnum from the duffle bag on the floor, and snuck into warehouse 2 without alerting anyone. The whole process was bold, both a miracle and a testament to his years of military service.

There was a high walkway that stood right under a row of large windows, that had a small staircase that led to the roof. Frank traversed these steps without a word, stopping at the trapdoor that led outside with a deep hum. He smacked the old rusty lock with the butt of his gun and watched it crumble to the floor, then yanked the trapdoor open with all of his strength. It swung downwards, a short latter dropping down with it as it fell.

Unlike the alley, they were bound to see him the moment he stepped up through the opening. Whatever Frank did next, he'd have to do without stepping over to the edge.

He pushed the door open slightly, enough so that the nozzle of his gun and the scope had an unobstructed path, and scanned the hilltop for any sign of movement without making too much himself. There was a small parapet that he couldn't maneuver around, but he could see more than enough. He scoffed at the sight of four men, dilly-dallying on the cliff next to a small stash of weapons. Actual weapons, not tranq guns, though for what reason, he couldn't say. As far as he was aware, they were only dealing with a kid. A kid who looked like she barely weighed enough to be considered healthy, no older than seventeen. It seemed excessive.

Sure, she had a fire in her eyes that any sane person wouldn't ignore, but that didn't warrant this kind of. . . preparation. They were armed like they were trying to take out a soldier or a devil. Not some girl who could hardly stand upright on her own. He pegged it as an intimidation tactic and concentrated on the matter at hand instead.

He took a deep breath in through his nose as he mapped everyone's position in his mind, practically feeling their lazy figures sway in the wind, left and right in small increments. His finger lightly squeezed the trigger in preparation to shoot. As his breath left him, he fired off a single shot, straight into the sniper's skull. The men on the hill froze, some in shock, some in confusion, but by the time they realized what was happening it was too late. 


End file.
